Well, I think we’ve finally gotten somewhere in the cleaning effort. Here’s the log for the day; hopefully I won’t have to add anything to it:

Wednesday, June 26, 2002 8:45a - Kitty from Horizon Restoration showed up at my apartment for the meeting between her, myself, and Doug from Crawford and Company (All-Ways Warm’s claims adjuster). She brought out this funky rubber sponge thing and showed me a demonstration - the difference between regular dust and this soot-dust stuff. She rubbed my bedroom wall with the sponge - it came up sort of a light grey. She then rubbed the wall in the living room with the sponge

• pure black. Unreal.

9:00a - Doug called. He was a little lost since he’s not familiar with Portland. I tried to talk him through directions, but I’m not very good at directions. I recommended he call the apartment office.

9:30a - Doug arrived. He got the demonstration from Kitty and agreed we were dealing with something other than ordinary household dust. I couldn’t show him how dirty the cat is because she was hiding under the couch. Doug took some pictures (of what, I don’t know; you really can’t see anything) and measured the rooms.

10:00a - Called Joe from the apartment management company looking for a final approval to get Horizon in and going. Joe wasn’t there, so I left a message.

11:10a - Joe called me at work. Cleaning starts tomorrow morning at 9:00a! I’m stoked. Horizon’s gotten the approval and everything’s set to go. Yay!

12:05p - Kitty from Horizon called. She’ll be visiting my apartment later today with the electronics cleaning guy and the ceiling cleaning guy (actually, it has to be “encapsulated” since the ceiling has asbestos in it). She’ll leave a lock-box on our door and leave us the combination to it so we can put a key in there for them to get in and out tomorrow.

So tonight Jenn and I have to make as much room as possible in the two bedrooms (which are already jammed full) so they can move stuff once it’s clean into the bedrooms. Whatever. I’m stoked things are finally moving.